Viking mythology and all that goes with it

[Tyra]

Hey, Celtic. I was just kidding, anyhow... The etymology of bärsärk is disputable. It can come from the bear skins, but it can also be translated as "no clothes", kind of how we say "he's in his birthday suit" - he is in his bare suit. It's a toss up. The Scandies in the Scandy lore were naked, but other people have written texts where they are dressed in skins, chewing on their shields and foaming at the mouth in warrior frenzy. The question again is which source to believe, which one is more skewed (it'd be good for the attacked to look like "woe is me" sometimes, and sometimes, it's not so good...), and like Bates said, where one was from, geographically. There is quite a difference between, let's say, a warrior from the Birka garrison or the Jomsvikings (if they existed), who, by all accounts, had all the fancy weaponry and armour a warrior could wish for, and, let's say, the everyday viking from a farmstead on the coast of Blekinge, who was lucky if he had the money to afford a leather helm. One would expect such a warrior to have an axe, though, since he was a farmer. Those were meant for hacking with, for sure. Javelins are for throwing, so I think a spear would be more appropriate for a Norseman, who most likely would not want to spend his hard earned silver on something like a javelin, that he could only use once. Bows and arrows are cheap to make if you are a farmer and have the time and the skill, which you probably would have if you ever had to hunt for your food, which you did back then. Again, the average Iron Age Scandy sword was meant for crushing, not cutting, and they were terribly expensive comparatively speaking. I've a list somewhere where it tells you how many horses and/or slaves a sword was worth in the various geographical areas, so again, this totally depends on where you are, when it was, and who made the sword. This is all terribly hypothetic, since the Scandy Iron Age spans over 1000 years, and things changed a lot in 1000 years.
Oh, yeah, and E.R, I'm with Bates on this one. Wieland/Weyland/Völund/Volund are one and the same, but the story differs a bit depending on geography. The main theme remains the same, though, the message is the same. I've also not heard the thing about the birds.

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

Ok then, ill go ask the sources of my teacher about the birds lol thanks

oh and ive checked the vid on the blades, its quite beautiful! makes me want to craft one myself...

 

[Bates]

Aye, my eventual goal is to be able to craft a similar one... but I haven't quite gotten the hang of forge welding yet. I know how to do it, I just never seem to get it quite right.

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

my "what to do list' is getting quite long.. i just hope ill be able to do a few of those things i want to do... First would be imperative to master swedish and norwegian, then id cross seas and study History there... Own a few horses, have my forge, so i can keep sculpting... *sigh*.... after that ppl ask me, what the job you want to do when youre done with university? .... grrrrr


I just had my class of Antiquity and we had texts to read about the first habitations, around -3500 and they were mentioning eventually that they found habitations in england and scandinavia. i asked the teacher about the 3 columns. She knew what i was talking about but she dont know anything more than what you told me already.... i tried..

 

[Bates]

Hey, that sounds almost like my plan. Take over the horse farm, convert one of the barns into a smithy, clear a bit of the bottom land for growing crops... and build myself a hall and ship with the wood I cut. Yes, I want to be an old school farmer when I grow up.

As for the highseat pillars, I can't say I'm surprised that your teacher doesn't know much more about them, it is somewhat of a topic of relatively limited interest. Just us crazy folks who either follow the old ways, or at least have an interest in recovering knowledge of them.

 

[Erzebeth.Rouge]

lol at least i tried and ill retry next tuesday with middle age teacher
Oh and i forgot, import some yew seeds so i can make then grow, more carving and sculpture ^^
ship sounds fun too ^^

 

[Krigloch the Furious]

so whats the deal with Tyr being the head god in northern europe before Odin?

 

[Tyra]

so whats the deal with Tyr being the head god in northern europe before Odin?

Mmmm, kind of a difficult subject. I will try to keep it as simple as possible, but it is such a broad subject that goes so much farther back in prehistory than "just" the Iron Age, never mind the Viking Age, that it's kind of tough to keep it neat and short.
As you may be aware, the Eddas do not tell us much of Tyr, other than the story of how he lost his hand while fettering Fenris. If you look at oral tradition and some "underlaying currents" - that's if you read between the lines in the sagas and look at the artwork for example - then you get a bit of added information about him. If you look at the symbolism that surrounds Tyr, he comes with all the attributes of a war god, and in later period (read: Viking Age) sagas he is outright said to be a god of war (notably not the god of war, probably since the person writing the story was aiming to please someone with ties to Odin).

Many researchers today believe that before the arrival of the Indo-European religions, to which asatru as we know it today belongs, there were goddess worshipping societies all over Europe. It was the Indo-Europeans that then brought the male warrior god worshipping religions to the area. This is more or less undisputed; what's disputed is when, how and why the Indo-Europeans and their religions moved in, and from where. It seems that those goddess worshipping tribes had male gods, too, but in secondary positions relative to The Goddess (Tacitus calls her Nerthus, but it is disputable whether or not this is a misunderstanding or not). For example, the Bronze Age Scandinavian rock carvings depict a set of male twin gods very prominently (actually, those twins are all over the Atlantic seaboard, since it appears us Scandies shared the cult with these people as far down as Malta - we've discussed that before on this board...). Some of the gods that we recognize from the later Viking Age start to appear in the rock carvings before the arrival of Odin and his companions on the time line axis. Some of the lore also seems to go back to this pre-Odin time. The idea is that Tyr is one of those gods. Jordh could be the remnants of The Goddess. Eliade thinks Thor is one of them, too, but I'm not so sure about that myself.

Some researchers believe that the story that is depicted in the Edda, where the Vanir and Aesir fight a war of soveregnty over the land, is an echo of the actual events that took place when the male warrior IE tribes moved in on the goddess worshipping tribes. Over time a peace was brokered once the populations mixed, just like in the Edda. For this to happen there had to have been two gods of war, one for the goddess' side, and one for the IE side. Some believe that Tyr is the goddess side's god of war, the Vanir, and Odin is the male god's side, the Aesir. Since the gods seem to have survived the clash, neither god of war was erased from the lore.
It could also be something along the lines of Tyr being the original god of war when the IE religion was still new to the area, while Odin was the creator god, the god of wisdom, mead and poetry etc.
Regardless of how it all came about, Odin gradually took over more and more of Tyr's duties. This may have been a result of the political goings on in this world, since different tribes held alegiances to different gods. If those tribes that claimed to be descendants of Odin (or tribes that just supported Odin for whatever reason) were stronger and more successful in battle and/or politics than those who claimed heritage from Tyr, then, naturally, they would hail Odin as their main god of war and it'd be Odin's name that was glorified. It's like Darwins evolution - the survival of the fittest - only here it is the stories of the winners that survive, along with their genes.

- -This is the end of the official answer...hope it made sense! - -

My own personal opinion, if you care, is that Tyr was the main male deity among the goddess worshipping tribes before the arrival of the male god cult. The idea of a Great Earth Goddess mating with a male Sky God to create all the other gods and goddesses, us and the rest of the flora and fauna, is extremely common among societies that are/were at the same stage of development that the Scandy society would have been at when the Goddess cult would have existed (see for example Polynesian religions, the religions on the Russian steppes and the earlier Celtic religion). Tyr has all the markings of a Great Sky God, and he is refered to as such in some of the older oral tradition. Ellis-Davidson (prominent researcher in the field of ON religion) also calls Tyr a sky god, and I think Eliade does, too, but don't quote me on it. Anyhow, at this point, that's speculation on my behalf, but the research article that I am working on right now, with the forge and all that, deals a bit with this, so I am digging around in it a bit and comparing it to other religions, lore, oral tradition and so on. Gimme a year and I'll tell you all about the hieros gamos between the Sky God and the Earth Mother, if I can prove my theory!

 

[The inquisitor]

I got the edda! I am loaning it of a friend. I can finally do some decent reading on it.

The only problem is that i am used to the dutch names (Wotan = Odin and stuff) so i get confused somethings on who is who.

 

[Celtik Militia]

thanks for all that explaination Tyra! very interesting!

 

[Celtik Militia]

thanks for all that explaination Tyra! very interesting!

 

[Azreia]

An interesting to book to read on this related topic is Merlin Stone's -When God was a woman.

Since there hasnt been much discussion here lately I've decided to try and start it up again, since i keep coming back and no one has posted anything new

I'm really interested in the Asatru movement in north america (mainly from an anthro position). I recently found an interview from Steve Mcnallen (from a few years back) where he discusses a few things i find interesting: like Asatru attracting the wrong crowd ( he didnt specify) but I think he wants more "normal" middle class americans/canadians and he apparently wants Asatru to become a more unified centralized religion.

I have my own opnions, but I wanted to see if anyone has anything to say on him, the movement in N.A., or his statements.

Or just anything, I'm avoiding hw and bored =)

azreia

 

[Barbarian_son]

I had read the Snorri Sturlson's saga...soo gooood

 

[Tyra]

An interesting to book to read on this related topic is Merlin Stone's -When God was a woman.

Since there hasnt been much discussion here lately I've decided to try and start it up again, since i keep coming back and no one has posted anything new

I'm really interested in the Asatru movement in north america (mainly from an anthro position). I recently found an interview from Steve Mcnallen (from a few years back) where he discusses a few things i find interesting: like Asatru attracting the wrong crowd ( he didnt specify) but I think he wants more "normal" middle class americans/canadians and he apparently wants Asatru to become a more unified centralized religion.

I have my own opnions, but I wanted to see if anyone has anything to say on him, the movement in N.A., or his statements.

Or just anything, I'm avoiding hw and bored =)

azreia

Hi! Just got back from Allthing last night, and so I had not had access to a computer for a while. It is nice to see a new and interesting topic posted.

Yes, I have loads to say about Steve McNallen, but since I don't like to rant about someone who is not here to defend himself, and especially not in such a public place as this, I won't say anything at all, except for this: Yes, North American asatru attracts the wrong people a lot of the time. McNallen is one of those.

It is a very interesting topic you've struck upon, one that I have thought, spoken and written about an awful lot. I am a bit swamped ATM, but if you ask specific questions and give me a day or two to respond, I think we could have a good discussion. -T

 

[Bates]

Aww, dang, that was this weekend. Next year, perhaps. Was thinking about going, but too much other stuff kept coming up. I'd been waiting for some questions here, but of course, the one thing that comes up is something I know next to nothing about. I only know a couple of folk (in a face to face manner, anyway) who have similar beliefs, and we all kinda do our own thing for the most part.

 

[Det Som Engang Var]

Oh yeah, thats guys cool.

 

[DragonKeeper]

Which ON god/goddess would be a patron of needleworking?

I was reading something on the theories of what gods the Indo-Europeans brought in when they migrated into and accross Europe. One of the gods (in this case a proto-Odin for lack of a better term) was brought into Europe via the Western Steppe region and spread accross Europe from East to West and into Scandinavia. This god or combination of gods blended into already existing gods with atributes probably taken from existing gods and led to the creation of Odin. This is from a linguistic perspective so I do not know how true this is. Both Slavs and Finns have a "sky-forger" god that is often personified as a blacksmith. I'm too tired to finish writing this so I will continue it tomorrow. Slavs have a god similar to Tyr, which I will mention later.

 

[Tyra]

I think it is Frigga, but it's one of those things I have never really thught much about, so I can't swear on it.
The theory you're refering to is one of several on the matter. That particular one is one I have studied at length, and, like you, I am too tired to get into it right now, but let's just say it does not hold water very well in the eyes of many researchers. The underlying problem (to keep this very short) is that it is based on flawed archaeology, which in turn is based on flawed linguistic research, which is based on the flawed archaeology, which is based on the flawed linguistics (whaddaya call that in English? Circle argument?). It also survives by perpetuating some faulty stereotypes built on political and religious ideas that date back to Julius Caesar, reinforced by the Nazis and by the Italian fascists. Although I don't think it's a great idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater, it's a matter of Caveat Emptor here. Many of the ideas may well apply. You just have to be aware of these underlying issues when you study the hypothesis. If you go back in this thread, this has been discussed here before. There really is no conclusive theory regarding this that is not frightfully wrought with holes the size of a small elephant...

 

[Azreia]

Sorry its taken me a while to respond but im working on a presentation for a medieval conference (stressful).

Basically I'm interested in knowing your and (anyone else who chooses to respond) opnions about establishing Asatru as an organized religion (the modern western conception) with a heirarchy of individuals along with established dogma.

Certain individuals have expressed that this is their goal or i have noticed even if they do not out right express it this is their implication.

While I do understand that some people feel that to make a impact in the world their has to be a stronger and more vocal organization and by trying to do this they are conforming to mainstream western societies idea of what a religion is.

But by modelling Asatru off of western conceptions of religion isnt that antithetical to why many individuals leave the judeo-christian religion and seek alternative ways to interact with world (both the natural and supernatural)?

I must say that i read alot of social anthro articles about asatru and for me its disappointing that a lot of them keep focusing on mcnallen (its seems to be that they cannot stop looking for what they view as a leader of the movement, instead of speaking to individuals) IMO, its an ethnocentric conception that to be valid their must be a spokesperson or leader, when i feel that alot of people I've talked to couldnt care less about his ideas. Do you believe he should be viewed as a spokesman for asatru? Do you believe his goals and beliefs represent the Asatru religious movement?

azreia

 

[Bates]

I'll be honest, I've not really even heard of the guy. But I personally don't tend to go for hierarchies or any kind of leadership that extends over or from folk you don't know personally. That goes for both politics and religion, with me. Hel, I don't even have a religion, in my eyes, I have a set of beliefs, namely because in my eyes, religions tend to come with the trappings you listed above. I can see why some people would wish for it, there are always those who wish to be lead. And you also have those who have some pipedream of establishing political unity and challenging the monotheist's bloc. While I can understand that desire, I don't see the old ways ever having the same kind of mass appeal that would enable those who follow them to ever be more then a political target, never mind a political opponent.
Short version, I don't tend to give a damn what other people do when it doesn't affect me or mine. Will I correct errors when I see them? Sure. Will I do some crazy things to try and break people out of a closed train of thought? Damn right. But even had I all the answers, would I want to sit on high and hand them out? No way. A person's relationship with the gods and the world is just that, a personal relationship. I'd no sooner tell someone how to do that then I would tell them how to sleep with their wife, or raise their children. And I like being told even less. My answers are right for me, they are likely not right for you... stuff like that, you know?